raccoondad predators are feared in a abstract way where its this almost ethereal presence rather than just...people, who are committing exploitation.
You can look up predators in your neighborhood on most government websites. You can see their mug shots in the news. You read reports when teachers or gym teachers or ministers turn out to be predators. It's pretty tangible for most people, not vague at all these days.
We made child abuse this abstract hyperviolent fictionalized concept because the reality is a lot of adults in society do not have the ideological framework to suggest its wrong in the first place, they needed to pervert it from reality to make it obviously wrong.
Are you saying child exploitation isn't as bad as people make it out to be, that they must exaggerate it and falsely claim it's more wrong than it is? In what ways do you feel child predators are unfairly maligned?
Not trying to catch you in a gotcha. As far back as twenty years ago, I had a psychology professor explain at length that we should sympathize with child sexual predators because it's just another sexual orientation. His exact words. We spent about two weeks discussing paraphilia and pedophilia. I'm a little concerned at this undercurrent of ideological defensiveness about child groomers and molesters.
If we were serious about confronting child abuse, we would start with asking "what causes a child to find themselves in these situations in the first place", but we are very far from that, because the question has an answer, and that answer would present an ideological and cultural challenge to a lot of people.
What is your answer? Why not just say it?
"What causes a child to find themselves in these situations" - my immediate answer is unfiltered internet access while being idle. It's not uncommon for an impressionable young kid to be targeted by groomers. It's happened to kids I know IRL. I'd say beyond that, it's usually kids who have low self esteem due to toxic school environments. These kids consume media and the internet 24/7, which drives their self esteem into the dirt, and then they get targeted by older adults who pretend to care about them.